These Precious Things, Let them Wash Away
by Dipenates
Summary: They're all on the same team now, but Xander can't get the bathroom out of his mind. Spoilers through Season Six. Warnings: discussions of attempted rape.


**These Precious Things, Let them Wash Away**

"He oughtn't talk to her like that." Spike nodded significantly in the direction of the Summers' basement window.

"Faith can take care of herself," Xander said wearily, checking the edge of another sword to make sure that it was sharp and true. He laid it on the grass next to the others.

"She can, can she?" Spike's tone was without emphasis, but his words made Xander look up.

Spike's eyes were on him, brilliant blue, and there was a hint of something in his gaze that pricked at Xander.

"She's a slayer, Spike. She can kick his ass seventeen different colours if she thinks he's getting fresh."

Spike took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and tipped one out.

"Not about 'getting fresh'. S'about the fact that Woods is a misogynist prick and she's spent too much of her life listening to gits like that."

Xander's mouth was open. "He's a misogynist? And you're what? The undead Gloria Steinem?"

Spike tapped the end of his cigarette against the smooth surface of the pack.

"Doesn't take much to recognise his particular brand of nasty."

Xander raised both eyebrows. "I bet."

Spike tilted his head to one side. "Something you'd like to say?"

"Well," Xander said. "I guess it's just that it takes on to know one."

Spike lifted his cigarette to his lips, unperturbed.

"I did my fair share of ravishing, sure. It was part of the flash and dash of being evil."

He picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue.

"But that man has a taste for making the ladies crawl on the floor and lick his boots; and that was never my sort of thing."

Xander's face was stiff. "I'm not talking about your glory days, Spike, as disturbing as that insight was. "I'm talking about Buffy."

"Buffy?" Spike flicked his lighter.

"I found her on her bathroom floor. After you tried to rape her."

A ripple of pain passed across Spike's face, and he took a long, harsh drag on his cigarette.

"This'll make no sense to you, but it wasn't like you're thinking."

"So how was it, Spike?"

"Not sure I can explain."

Xander felt a burst of anger fizz in his stomach. "Why don't you give it the old college try?"

Spike darted a look at Xander, a quick flick of his eyes.

"Reckon the nastiest way you ever did the nasty was with that pretty demon of yours."

He blew a long, thin stream of smoke into the night air. "I'm sure she can inflict pain with the best of them, but I'd bet my boots there's nothing twisted about it." He smirked. "Or more twisted than a fellow would be looking for."

"You were getting to the part that wasn't about my jilted bride's sexual preferences?"

Spike gave Xander an assessing glance.

"I don't believe that women should be ladies in the bedroom. I've seen my share of times when women were supposed not to care too much for sex. In my day, they were sent to the loony bin for having a good time all by themselves."

Spike shrugged. "It always seemed like a good thing to me to have a girl in your bed of her own volition, without having to persuade her, or coax her, or twist her arm."

Xander frowned. "Yeah, I think we can all agree that sex is funnest when it's fun for everyone."

"S'not what I'm saying." Spike had his cigarette between his lips. "I'm saying that I'm not the sort who minds when the ladies are in the driving seat in the bedroom, and who calls for his fainting couch at the clink of a chain."

"Okay," Xander said, slowly.

"Not judging, neither, when I say that Buffy went at it like a hell cat. Fur flying, scratching, bruising, bloody sex it was."

"Spike—"

"I wouldn't be discussing the details with you, if it wasn't important." It was nearly a shout. Spike lowered his voice. "She was in a bad way, Xander. This place was literally a torment to her and she wanted to deaden the pain by distracting herself with new pain."

He jerked his head toward the basement. "Something that the other slayer could probably give a masterclass in."

"I get that she was miserable. I get that I helped make my friend's life a living hell." There was a dull ache in the centre of Xander's chest.

"Again, not my point." Spike frowned. "There's a wafer thin line between pain for pleasure and pain for pain, and it's a line I know I crossed." Spike flicked his cigarette into the lawn ashtray with unerring accuracy.

"Not excusing anything when I say that when someone is fucking you because they hate you, and you're the razor blade they're carving their pretty white skin against, it's hard to see that line."

Xander sat still for a minute. "That's kind of what Buffy said."

Spike slid his gaze sideways but Xander was looking away from him.

"Not the insert Tab A into slot B stuff, but just that things had gotten confused." He looked down at his hands. "I guess I just didn't get it."

"Hard thing to understand if you've only seen that kind of nastiness on TV. Rape, and such."

"That's not exactly—" Xander's head was still turned away.

It took Spike a moment.

"Knew your father was free with his fists." His voice was gruff. "Didn't realise he'd taken off his belt for more than one reason."

Xander whipped his head round. "My father didn't—"

"Who then?" Spike's eyes were wide.

"I didn't say—"

"Didn't need to." Spike's expression had softened. "Your face is telling the whole story, whether you like it or not."

_Very much with the not. _"I don't want to talk about it." Xander's voice was stiff.

"Up to you, mate, but might be worth getting it off your chest to someone." Spike shifted on the step. "Vampires don't feel things like people do, but I can still remember every single time that Angelus decided that no meant 'ooh, carry on you great poof'."

Xander's mouth fell open. He closed it.

Spike narrowed his eyes. "You children don't know how lucky you were to escape pretty much unscathed by Angelus. He was cold, and vicious, and had a taste for humiliation and shame that made my stomach turn. What he did to Drusilla—"

Spike shook his head, and something in Xander felt envious of the way that Spike just carried on talking in the same light, cool voice that he always used. That he wasn't stammering. That his voice wasn't wobbling all over the place like a toddler on ice skates.

"Drusilla?" His own voice sounded hollow.

"Before he turned her. " Spike delved in his pockets for a fresh cigarette. "I don't know all the details. Never asked and probably wouldn't be told."

He looked into the distance, staring at the past. "Sometimes when he was asleep, Darla and I would talk."

He drew on his cigarette, paper burning with a hiss, and shook his head.

"When I was a boy, my mother would take me to church. The version of the Bible they used then talked about stiff-necked women. Darla was stiff-necked all right, but she was also pissed off that Angelus turned Dru, and that loosened her tongue."

Xander, with his years of practice, caught the preternatural something that usually heralded the flip into gameface, but Spike's features stayed smooth.

"No such thing as child abuse then. Just an ill-used child, or an urchin accepting the shit of the day to put food in their stomachs. But he hurt her in ways you wouldn't wish on anyone. Tortured her body and her mind until she went insane. Murdered her family. Defiled her." He launched the word into space, as if he wanted to get it far away from his body.

"She was a scholar and a nun before she met Angelus. Darla may have been a prostitute, but he made Drusilla a whore." Spike spat on the ground.

"I've never," Xander said, "understood the difference between Angel and Angelus."

"S'beyond understanding. I've been a vampire without a soul, and with one, and I don't understand it. I would probably still be mad as a hatter in the school basement if Buffy hadn't—"

"Rescued you?"

"Yeah." He flicked ash off his cigarette." I don't know how he isn't climbing the walls somewhere. I liked – my _demon _liked - the violence, the rush. His liked destroying people; shaving piece by piece off them until they were nothing. Having a soul, it doesn't take away your desire to do wrong, but it lets you know that other things with souls are like you."

"Like a conscience?"

"I s'pose so."

"He saved me," Xander said. "From Faith."

"From Faith?" Spike's brow was wrinkled in confusion.

"Yeah." Xander felt almost light-headed, as he watched the realisation stiffen Spike's half-smile. "Her post-slay hormones took my virginity."

"They're like wild animals after a kill." Spike's tone was neutral.

"After they've slayed," Xander corrected, automatically. "I was dumb enough to think that sex meant something to her and, when she went rogue, I went to talk her down from the ledge. I thought we had something in common."

"Because of both being at the back of the line when decent childhoods were handed out." And the look in Spike's eyes made something tickle at the back of Xander's throat.

"Something like that."

"But she was too far gone."

"She threw me on the bed and bad times ensued." Xander realised that there were words he couldn't say, felt sick at the thought of saying. "Angel arrived like the 87th Airborne and belted her in the face."

"Captain Fantastic at your service. Good for him." There wasn't a trace of sarcasm in Spike's voice.

Xander snorted. "It was like being rescued from the Boston Strangler by John Wayne Gacy."

"Much as I can't abide the poof, that's not him anymore." Spike leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. "And what I did to Buffy? Not me anymore."

He looked at Xander's face. "Not my place to say, but I venture that it's not Faith anymore, either." His voice was unexpectedly gentle.

Xander cleared his throat, and told himself it was because of the cigarette smoke that lay around their heads like wreaths. "I always thought that Faith was paying it forward, and that's the thing that sticks in my craw."

"Little girls were never my cup of tea." Spike's voice was quiet. "But I've seen enough of the world to know that she has the look."

"Yeah." Xander's eyes were dark.

"I'd wager that the first bit of power she had was slaying, and she watched her Watcher tortured to death by Kakistos. Who makes our Principal friend look like Betty Friedan, so I would guess that what he did was an Angelus special." Spike's fingers traced an arc through the air, as though he was going to put his hand on Xander's shoulder and then thought better of it. "Doesn't make what she did to you right, but—"

"Yeah." Xander said, again.

They sat, on the steps, and looked at the row of swords glinting in the light from the porch.

Spike snorted, suddenly. "Fuck _Passions. _Sunnydale's home to the best soap opera on earth."

Xander leaned back, looking at the stars. "Will the bone-crushing demons of awfulness be redeemed of their evil, evil ways? Will the White Hats prevail? Will there be anyone alive to tune in after next week's scheduled apocalypse?"

Spike smirked. "Fancy a beer?"

Xander was still looking at the night sky. "Why the hell not?"


End file.
